The invention relates to electronic devices, and, more particularly, to software and hybrid hardware/software development and systems and methods.
The expanding use of computers and embedded processors increasingly demands customized applications specific to the requirements of particular users. This has led to the widespread employment of visual builder tools for creating custom application programs through the interlinking of software modules from libraries.
For example, Visual Basic for Applications from Microsoft Corporation and C++ Builder from Borland International provide visual environments that have a graphical user interface (GUI) and include a toolbox with different classes of components (software modules), form windows for combining components visually, and property sheets for the components that can be modified to customize the components. U.S. Pat. No. 5,850,548 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,950,001 illustrate variations of visual development environments. However, the known visual development methods have problems including limited component intelligence and flexibility.
The present invention provides a graphical development system for software or software/hardware hybrids with intelligent development components appropriate for real-time processors plus development framework rules to insure development component object optimization within the resulting application program. This has advantages including program development of digital signal processor applications by non-specialist programmers.